REAL PEOPLE, REAL ISSUES

August 30, 2008

Multiple Visions of Soul Music’s Past and Future

By NATE CHENIN -- An R&B fanatic with a glitch-prone time machine would have felt
right at home in the Highline Ballroom on Wednesday night. For the rest
of the crowd it was a game of capricious adjustment as Raphael Saadiq,
a retro-soul specialist, and Janelle Monáe, a cyber-soul fabulist,
offered multiple visions of the music’s past and future. Both artists
were openly obsessive in their pursuits, and both managed to bring the
room with them. Mr. Saadiq has a history of nostalgic revisionism, as a member of
Tony! Toni! Toné! from the late 1980s through the mid-’90s, and more
recently as a songwriter and producer. His fetching solo debut, in
2002, bore the title “Instant Vintage,” which sums up his golden ideal.
But his new album — “The Way I See It,” due out on Columbia next month
— pushes the retro angle more insistently. And Mr. Saadiq brought the
same qualities to his show, an ostentatious throwback carried by
hard-working charisma. He took the stage to a vamp from “100
Yard Dash,” one of the new album’s best tracks. His band, nine pieces
counting the horns, conjured a classic Motown vibe; his attire, a
cream-colored suit with a skinny black tie, served the same purpose.
And on the next tune, a shuffle called “Love That Girl,” Mr. Saadiq and
his backup singers engaged in a routine of snaps and half-spins,
echoing the Temptations in swerve as well as style.Mr.
Saadiq is unabashed about such pilfery, in the way that peacocks are
unabashed about plumage. He offered a few other songs with a
Temptations sound — “Just One Kiss” had the backup singer Erika Jerry
ably filling in for Joss Stone, who sings it on the new album — and
just as earnestly evoked Stevie Wonder
and the Jackson Five. When he left to change into a black suit, the
band played the woozy riff from “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” a
late-period Beatles tune. As
a diligent entertainer, Mr. Saadiq dipped into more recent history,
with a brisk medley of Tony! Toni! Toné! hits. (He seemed to treat this
as an obligation.) Playing a few songs from “Instant Vintage,” he was
looser: “Charlie Ray” took on a Funkadelic bounce, and “Be Here”
sprawled into a psychedelic jam.What was missing there, and
throughout the show, was Mr. Saadiq’s wickedly sharp electric bass
playing. When he picked up the instrument for an encore, “Skyy, Can You
Feel Me,” it was a reminder of strengths that had gone buried all
night. By contrast, Ms. Monáe left no stone unturned in the
opening set, which drew from her willfully eccentric new debut album,
“Metropolis: The Chase Suite” (Bad Boy/Atlantic). A song cycle
ostensibly set in the year 2719, the album casts its heroine as Cindi
Mayweather, an android wanted by the authorities for crimes of human
feeling. Ms. Monáe was true to that outlandish theme in
performance, right down to the jerk-jointed dance moves. “Are you bold
enough to reach for love?” she wailed in her second hyperkinetic song
of the set, “Many Moons.” Elsewhere — on a D.J.-enhanced fanfare called
“Sincerely, Jane” — she deftly connected future terrors to present-day
ills. Her energy dipped only once, on a solid but uninspired version of Charlie Chaplin’s
“Smile,” sung with sparse accompaniment from her guitarist, Kellindo.
But that was hardly a momentum killer: the mini-set ended a couple of
tunes later with Ms. Monáe surfing the crowd, calling up emotions with
no time stamp besides the present. SOURCE:NYT.COM

Comments

Multiple Visions of Soul Music’s Past and Future

By NATE CHENIN -- An R&B fanatic with a glitch-prone time machine would have felt
right at home in the Highline Ballroom on Wednesday night. For the rest
of the crowd it was a game of capricious adjustment as Raphael Saadiq,
a retro-soul specialist, and Janelle Monáe, a cyber-soul fabulist,
offered multiple visions of the music’s past and future. Both artists
were openly obsessive in their pursuits, and both managed to bring the
room with them. Mr. Saadiq has a history of nostalgic revisionism, as a member of
Tony! Toni! Toné! from the late 1980s through the mid-’90s, and more
recently as a songwriter and producer. His fetching solo debut, in
2002, bore the title “Instant Vintage,” which sums up his golden ideal.
But his new album — “The Way I See It,” due out on Columbia next month
— pushes the retro angle more insistently. And Mr. Saadiq brought the
same qualities to his show, an ostentatious throwback carried by
hard-working charisma. He took the stage to a vamp from “100
Yard Dash,” one of the new album’s best tracks. His band, nine pieces
counting the horns, conjured a classic Motown vibe; his attire, a
cream-colored suit with a skinny black tie, served the same purpose.
And on the next tune, a shuffle called “Love That Girl,” Mr. Saadiq and
his backup singers engaged in a routine of snaps and half-spins,
echoing the Temptations in swerve as well as style.Mr.
Saadiq is unabashed about such pilfery, in the way that peacocks are
unabashed about plumage. He offered a few other songs with a
Temptations sound — “Just One Kiss” had the backup singer Erika Jerry
ably filling in for Joss Stone, who sings it on the new album — and
just as earnestly evoked Stevie Wonder
and the Jackson Five. When he left to change into a black suit, the
band played the woozy riff from “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” a
late-period Beatles tune. As
a diligent entertainer, Mr. Saadiq dipped into more recent history,
with a brisk medley of Tony! Toni! Toné! hits. (He seemed to treat this
as an obligation.) Playing a few songs from “Instant Vintage,” he was
looser: “Charlie Ray” took on a Funkadelic bounce, and “Be Here”
sprawled into a psychedelic jam.What was missing there, and
throughout the show, was Mr. Saadiq’s wickedly sharp electric bass
playing. When he picked up the instrument for an encore, “Skyy, Can You
Feel Me,” it was a reminder of strengths that had gone buried all
night. By contrast, Ms. Monáe left no stone unturned in the
opening set, which drew from her willfully eccentric new debut album,
“Metropolis: The Chase Suite” (Bad Boy/Atlantic). A song cycle
ostensibly set in the year 2719, the album casts its heroine as Cindi
Mayweather, an android wanted by the authorities for crimes of human
feeling. Ms. Monáe was true to that outlandish theme in
performance, right down to the jerk-jointed dance moves. “Are you bold
enough to reach for love?” she wailed in her second hyperkinetic song
of the set, “Many Moons.” Elsewhere — on a D.J.-enhanced fanfare called
“Sincerely, Jane” — she deftly connected future terrors to present-day
ills. Her energy dipped only once, on a solid but uninspired version of Charlie Chaplin’s
“Smile,” sung with sparse accompaniment from her guitarist, Kellindo.
But that was hardly a momentum killer: the mini-set ended a couple of
tunes later with Ms. Monáe surfing the crowd, calling up emotions with
no time stamp besides the present. SOURCE:NYT.COM

September 2012

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